Items:
We would like to welcome 5 new items that joined OBUO(Orphanage of Beautiful Unwanted Objects)at XU.
1. a little duck that somebody left under the chimney
2. a wedding dress
3. a coat with black fake fur
4. snail hair oil
5. a tampon
Many sincere thanks to all the donors we met, as well as the one's who wished to remain unknown. We are very inspired to find objects in secret places!
Dealing with circumstances:
A huge scaffold placed in front of our house and construction work taking place on the ceiling above, gave us the opportunity to go for day-trips, little adventures and pick-nicks with our objects in different locations inside Ruilen.
We would like to thank the section of lonely socks, the swing, the check-in & check-out desks, as well as the art section for their kind hospitality.
Sharing with guests:
Guests that came to visit us and XU freshened up our stay there and made us ask ourselves new questions concerning our way of communicating.
The sessions we set make most of our guests feel a little lost in the beginning, yet, after a while, when the lostness dances with the willingness to stay present, what is created is a fertile morphing field where the ambiguous seeds of our exchange are planted, waiting for the right moment to blossom.
We would like to thank the new and old, shorter and longer terms guests, Roman, Andrea, Sandrina, Alex, Ida, Joseph & Bram for creating, through their particular way of being present, the possibility of a world of shared dreams.
We are grateful to you for making our dreams change!
Diary of meetings
Wednesday: Dreaming Under the Lonely Socks (with Andrea)
Our exchange involved updating Andrea about how we developed her dream idea during the previous week and brainstorming on how to continue the work together. The 3 of us decided to to do a 30 min dreaming session Under the Lonely Socks
using all of our objects.
During this set we played with 2 roles:
a. dreamer, letting her dream move her
b. being moved by the dreamer, moving the dream.
We exchanged roles after 15 min
Andrea was making an illustration on paper, viewing the situation as her dream.
Her draft illustrations can be found inside XU.
Thursday: Swinging the dream (with Roman & Andrea)
Our session started with a 20 min unusually energetic duet dancing that took place around the entrance of Ruilen. The dance emerged spontaneously from Roman's idea to film us from the swinging swing while we are lying on the floor with all our objects.
We continued with a 1h 20min dreaming session with Roman filming and Andrea occasionally making little drawings from inside the small glass house at the entrance. During this set we played with the same 2 roles as on Wednesday and were exchanging roles once every 20 min.
We played together with all our objects. The brown beans gradually became the main characters.
Friday: Dreaming with new guests (with Alex, Sandrina and Roman(filming))
Sayaka left to Spain and Alex and Sandrina came to visit me in Xu.
Both of them were there during the opening night and apart from offering us a very beautiful and mysterious object - a woolen ball that has soap inside - they were interested in coming back and getting somehow involved in our project.
Already then, Alex had proposed to us the idea to make a very detailed archive of all our objects, listing their special qualities and organizing them according to categories.
Our meeting started with a very long talk inside Xu - it was the first time we tried fitting 4 people (Alex, Sandrina, Roman, Maria) inside a tiny space, and realized it's actually possible. We spend more than 1 hour in there, drinking coffee and tea, catching up, informing them on how things went since the opening and exchanging ideas on how to continue working. We had lots of fun imagining possible things to do and both of them had many, very intelligent ideas that could be developed in a long term project.
After the talk we did a 45 min dreaming session (the same construction as on Sunday 18th Nov) with 3 roles that are exchanged every 15 min : 1. dreamer, let your dream move you 2. being moved by the dreamer, moving the dream 3. undefined role.
Sandrina offered an additional idea on top of this construction and contributed more objects. She gave each dreamer one of her exchange cards. The dreamer had to go and pick up his/her object from the exhibition shelves and start dreaming in relation to this object.
Our session travelled everywhere in the space while Techno music was playing loudly from the Seed's Exchange shelves, causing some unexpected wild dance around the swing and under the scaffold.
We continued with more talk at the Roest next door. More ideas and images kept coming. I felt that after this day I could have written 3 new project proposals.
I became aware than within the conditions I could only make direct use of 0,1% of what was proposed, yet I felt grateful for the brain's shake up.
Saturday: Back to the basics - Getting to know home (with Sandrina)
Sandrina and me did and 1h 20min dreaming session with 2 roles that are exchanged every 20min:
One person inside XU, dreaming, letting her dream move her and the other outside Xu, being moved by the dreamer, moving the dream.
We talked about the feeling of being protected when being inside XU and the feeling of being supported in dreaming by the person outside. After this session it became clear that this is not something we can easily explain or find the right words for, yet it is clearly felt.
We would like to understand better this relation to another and to XU, as we see that it helps us flow in uninterrupted creativity and feeling of connection to another for a longer time.
Sunday: Spontaneous acts (with Sandrina, Ida, Joseph and Roman(filming))
Upon entering the exhibition I found two choreography students from the SNDO, Ida & Joseph, that happened to visit.
We spontaneously decided to do short movement solos with objects in different locations inside the exhibition.
We worked with the following construction:
Each person picks an object from our collection, walks around the exhibition for 15 min and picks a location.
After 15 min the 4 of us meet and go for a journey all together. Each time we stop for one person to do a 3 min solo with his/her object in the location he/she chose before while the other's watch.
We did two rounds in total. The locations in the 2nd round were found spontaneously.
Watching those solos was a refreshing and fun experience and gave me new inspiration for using the space and objects.
After Joseph and Ida left we continued with a 30 min session together with Sandrina at the art section behind the glass house.
We started by making two trails with beans starting from XU and took two different paths around the glass house. We agreed to start our session at the point where we would meet.
The session consisted of short solos - one person moving and the other observing, exchanging role every 2-3 min. Sandrina proposed to take tourist photos with flash at the end of each solo, so we did that too :)
